Omega к-4

by Джек Макдевитт

  According to Bill, the atmosphere would be breathable, but they’d be prudent to use bottled air. The air at sea level was notably richer in oxygen content than the standard mix. Gravity was.92 standard.

  The smaller moon had a retrograde movement. Both satellites were airless, and both were devoid of evidence that anyone had ever landed on them. Seventy percent of the surface was liquid water. And Lookout had a rotational period of twenty-two hours, seventeen minutes.

  They went into orbit, crossed the terminator onto the night side, and almost immediately saw lights.

  But they weren’t the clear hard-edged lights of cities. There was smoke and blurring and a general irregularity. “Forest fires,” said Jack. “Caused by lightning, probably.” He smiled. “Sorry.” Though probably he wasn’t.

  Thirty minutes later they were back on the daylight side. There were no major cities. The night was dark as a coal sack. Jack sat down, visibly relieved, visibly disappointed, and sent off yet another report to Vadim, information to the Academy. “No sign that the world is occupied. No lights. Will look more closely.”

  “So why is the cloud coming this way?” asked Winnie.

  THEY MADE SEVERAL orbits and saw nothing. They zeroed in on numerous harbors and rivers, looking for any sign of improvement and finding none. There was no visible shipping, no indication of a road anywhere.

  They were about to send off another message informing Broadside that the Academy need not concern itself with Lookout when Digger heard Jack’s raspy uh-oh. He glanced at the screens, which were showing nothing but night. “I saw lights,” said Jack.

  “Where?” Digger knew that Jack had written the world off. He was not going to get excited again. Not about Lookout.

  “They’re gone,” said Jack. “We passed over. They’re behind us. But they were there.”

  “Bill?”

  “Realigning the scopes now.”

  The alpha screen, the prime operational monitor, went dark, and then came back on. “I’ve got it,” said the AI.

  Several lights, like lingering sparks. But they didn’t go out.

  “Fires?”

  “What are we getting from the sensors?” asked Winnie.

  Bill switched over, and they saw several hazy, luminous rings. “Somebody’s got the lights on,” said Digger. He looked over at Kellie.

  “Could be,” she said.

  It wasn’t London, thought Digger. But it was sure as hell something.

  “What’s the ground look like?” asked Winnie.

  Bill put the area on display.

  The biggest of the continents stretched from pole to pole, narrowing to an isthmus in the southern temperate latitudes before expanding again. The lights were located on, or over, the isthmus.

  It was about four hundred kilometers long, ranging between forty and eighty kilometers wide. It was rough country, with a mountain range running its length, lots of ridges, and three or four rivers crossing from one ocean to the other.

  Digger didn’t know what he was supposed to feel. He was along on the mission, and he was dedicated to it like Jack and Winnie. But unlike them, he hadn’t expected to see anything. Nobody ever saw anything. It was a rule.

  “How could we have missed that?” asked Winnie.

  “It’s still raining down there,” suggested Bill. “Visibility hasn’t been very good.”

  “Lock it in, Bill. I don’t want to have trouble finding it again when it gets out into the daylight.” Digger went back to the viewport and stared out at the long dark curve of the planet. There wasn’t a light anywhere to be seen. Well, they’d come around again a few more times before it would be dawn over the target area. Maybe the cloud cover would go away and they’d get a good look.

  And then they’d zero in by daylight.

  THEY DIDN’T SEE the lights again. But the weather cleared toward dawn, the target area rotated out into the sun, and Digger looked down on a long jagged line that traveled the length of the isthmus. A road! It couldn’t be anything else.

  Simultaneously Kellie announced she could see a city. “One of the harbors,” she said, bringing it up on the monitor.

  “Here’s another one.” Winnie pointed at the opposite side of the isthmus. And another here, where the isthmus widens into the southern continent. And two more, where it reaches up into the northern land mass.

  Cities crowded around harbors, cities spread out along an impossibly crooked shore line, cities straddling both sides of rivers. There was even a city on a large offshore island in the western sea.

  The telescope zoomed in, and they saw creatures on the road, large awkward beasts of burden that looked like rhinos. And humanoids, equally awkward, wide around the middle, waddling along, with reins in their hands and hats that looked like sombreros.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Jack. “They’re actually there.”

  They had pale green skin, large floppy feet (had their ancestors been ducks?), and colorful clothing. It was red and gold and deep sea blue and emerald green. Winnie counted six digits rather than five, and thought their scalps were hairless. They wore baggy leggings and long shirts. Some had vests, and everything was ornamented. There were lots of bracelets, necklaces, feathers. Many wore sashes.

  “My first aliens,” said Kellie, “and we get Carpenter.” That was a reference to Charlie Carpenter, the creator of the Goompahs, an enormously popular children’s show. And the aliens did, in fact, look like Goompahs.

  “Incredible,” said Winnie.

  Somebody laughed and proposed a toast to Charlie Carpenter, who’d gotten there first. They were looking at the traffic on the central road just outside a city that stood on the eastern coast. While they shook their heads in amusement, Jack switched the focus and brought up a building atop a low ridge near the sea. It stopped the laughter.

  The building was round, a ring of Doric columns supporting a curved roof. It glittered in the sunlight, which was just reaching it, and it looked for all the world like a Greek temple.

  “Say what you like,” said Digger. “But these people know their architecture.”

  THEY COUNTED TWELVE cities in all, eight through the isthmus, two on the northern continent, one in the south, and one on the island. It was sometimes difficult to determine where one city ended and another began because, remarkably, they saw no walls. “Maybe it’s a nation,” said Kellie, who’d come down from the bridge to share the moment of triumph. “Or a confederacy.”

  There was a similarity in design among all of them. They’d clearly not been planned, in the modern sense, but had grown outward from commercial and shipping districts, which were usually down near the waterfront. But nevertheless the cities were laid out in squares, with considerable space provided for parks and avenues. The buildings were not all of the elegance of the temple, but there was a clean simplicity to the design, in contrast to the decorative accoutrements worn by individuals.

  The cities were busy, crowds jostling through the commercial areas, hordes of the creatures doing that curious duck-walk, little ones chasing one another about, individuals relaxing near fountains. And Jack realized with a shock that the natives had running water.

  “Can we tell how big they are?” asked Winnie.

  “Smaller than they look,” said Bill. “They would on average come up to Jack’s shoulders.”

  There were a variety of structures, two-story buildings that might have been private dwellings, others that looked like public buildings, shops, markets, storage facilities. Three ships were tied up at the piers, and a fourth was entering the harbor as they watched. Its sails were billowing in the wind, and sailors scrambled across its decks.

  The architecture was similar everywhere. If it lacked the Doric columns of the seaside temple, it possessed the same simple elegance, straight lines, vaulted roofs, uncluttered cornices. Just the thing, Digger thought, that would attract an omega. And he was struck by how much better the cloud’s sensing equipment was than the Jenkins’s.

  THE CITIES
WERE surrounded by agricultural areas, squares of land given over to one crop or another, orchards, silos, barns. A few rhinos, and other smaller creatures, grazed contentedly.

  Gradually the farms gave way to forest.

  Beyond the northern cities, the woods grew thick, and broke on the slopes of a mountain range that rivaled the Alps. Beyond the peaks lay jungle, and the jungle, as it approached the equator, became desert. In the south, the cities stood on the edge of more mountains, which proceeded unbroken for thousands of kilometers, all the way to the ice cap.

  Where were the other cities?

  Digger didn’t realize he’d asked the question aloud until Jack commented that it looked as if the isthmus was the only populated section on the planet. The other continents looked empty. The land above and below the isthmus looked equally empty.

  They searched the oceans for ships and found none other than those in the coastal waters near the cities. “Looks,” said Kellie, “as if they stay in sight of land.”

  “Look at this.” Digger pointed at two of the rivers that crossed the isthmus. “A lock.”

  They zoomed in and saw that it was so. “They have to get ships over the high ground in the middle of the isthmus,” said Jack. “So they use a system of locks to raise them, then get them back down to sea level.”

  Kellie raised a congratulatory fist. “The Goompahs are engineers,” she said. “Who would’ve thought?”

  Jack was getting ready to make his report. “They’ll want to know about the population.” He looked around at his colleagues. “What do you think?”

  Anybody’s guess. Winnie brought the cities up one by one. The northernmost was on the western coast, and it was probably the smallest of the group. It could lay claim to a couple of spectacular buildings. The larger of the two was set in front of a pool and looked very much like the main admin building on the Academy grounds. It was long, low, only three levels, made of white stone. It was probably a bit smaller, but the same architect might have designed both.

  The other structure was round, like the temple by the sea, but bigger, with more columns. It appeared to be open to the elements. And something that might have been a sun disk stood at the apex of its roof. It looked out across a park.

  Crowds were pressed into the commercial section, which was too narrow. The avenues curved and wandered off in all directions. They were lined with buildings of all sizes and shapes. Minimum twenty thousand, Digger thought. Probably closer to twenty-five. The other cities appeared to be larger. Say an average population fifteen to twenty percent more. Make it thirty thousand for each. That was a conservative estimate. And it gave, what?

  “Three to four hundred thousand,” Winnie told Jack.

  He nodded. Kellie said the estimate was a bit low, but Digger thought she had it about right. Jack agreed and went across the corridor to record his report.

  One of the sailing vessels was making its way northward up the coast on the western sea. It was under full sail, and it looked like an eighteenth-century frigate. No Roman galleys for these guys. Or Viking boats. They clearly had no use for oars.

  On the other hand, they hadn’t learned how to make an outboard motor.

  “THE QUESTION,” SAID Jack, “is what we do now?”

  It was night on the isthmus again, but a clear night this time, and they could see the cities spotted with lights. They were barely discernible, flickering oil lamps probably, but they were there.

  “We wait for instructions,” said Jack. “They’ll probably send some contact specialists.”

  “I hate to bring this up,” said Digger, “but where are the contact specialists coming from?”

  “The Academy, I assume.”

  “It’s a nine-month flight.”

  “I know.”

  “The cloud is only nine months away. When they get here there won’t be anybody to contact.”

  Jack looked uncomfortable. “If they get underway without wasting any time, they’ll have a couple of weeks before the cloud hits. In any case, Hutch can get back to us within a couple of weeks and let us know what she intends. Meantime, I don’t think there’s much for us to do except sit tight.”

  Kellie frowned. “You don’t think we should go down and say hello?”

  “No,” said Jack. “The Protocol requires us to keep hands off. No contact.”

  “Nothing anybody can do,” said Winnie.

  Digger frowned. “Doesn’t the policy say something about extraordinary circumstances?”

  “As a matter of fact, no.”

  ARCHIVE

  Vadim, we have a lowtech civilization on Lookout. On the third world. It’s confined to a small area in the southern hemisphere. What do you want us to do?

  — Jack Markover

  February 26, 2234

  LIBRARY ENTRY

  “Where are you going, Boomer?”

  “I’m headed to the Chocolate Shop.”

  “Can I go along? It’s my favorite place in the whole town.”

  “Sure. As long as you promise not to eat any. It’s not good to eat between meals.”

  “I know, Boomer. You can count on me.” (Wink, wink at the audience.)

  — The Goompah Show

  All-Kids Network

  February 25

  chapter 5

  On board the Patrick Heffernan, near the Bumblebee Nebula.

  Thursday, February 27.

  “NOTHING,” SAID SKY. They’d been searching the Quagmire’s last known position for six hours. There was no sign of the ship, and none of the hedgehog.

  “It couldn’t just have disappeared,” said Emma.

  He wasn’t sure whether the “it” she was referring to meant the ship or the hedgehog. But whichever, there didn’t seem to be any sign of either in the neighborhood.

  Schuyler Capabianco was one of only two of the Academy’s twenty-three captains who were currently married, and the only one whose wife was part of the onboard team. She was an astrophysicist out of the University of Arizona who claimed she’d never have started taking Academy assignments had it not been for the chance to be with her husband. He didn’t believe it, but he was happy to hear her say so.

  Em had been optimistic for a happy outcome to the rescue mission. She had never witnessed a fatal off-Earth incident, and could not bring herself to believe one had happened there. A rationale was hard to find, though. The most likely seemed to be that a power failure had occurred, leaving the ship adrift, without its long-range communication functions. Sky knew it was possible, but only remotely so.

  When they’d arrived near the cloud and heard no distress signal, no radio call, they had both realized that the chance of rescue had become vanishingly small. Superluminals were designed so that the radio transmitter would be pretty much the last thing that went down.

  There just weren’t many things that could account for the silence other than catastrophe. Nevertheless they looked, but Bill reported no sign of the ship. “It is not in the search area,” he said.

  Em and Sky didn’t know either of the people on the Quagmire, but that didn’t soften things any. There was a brotherhood among those who traveled the great deeps. A tradition had developed much like that among mariners in the dangerous early days on the seas: They were a band, they looked out for each other, and they grieved when anyone was lost.

  The Quagmire was lost. The mission had become salvage rather than rescue.

  “Must have been an explosion,” Emma said.

  Sky looked off to starboard, where the omega drifted, dark and quiet. But it was too far away to be the culprit.

  Emma folded herself into his arms. “Damn,” she said.

  “We knew all along it might be like this,” said Sky.

  “I suppose.” She snuffled, wiped her eyes, pulled away from him, and cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, “there’s probably no point hanging around here. What we should do is try to get a look at what happened.”

  That got his attention. “How do you suggest we do
that?”

  THEY SLIPPED INTO hyperspace, rode the quiet mists, and jumped out again before Sky could finish his coffee. “Right on target,” Bill announced. They had traveled 104 billion kilometers, had gotten in front of the light wave from the search area, and could now look back at the place where the hedgehog and the Quagmire had been. Bill unfolded the array of dishes that served as the ship’s telescope and aimed it at the region.

  They were seeing the area as it had been four days earlier. Had the telescope been more efficient, they could have watched the Quagmire approach the hedgehog, could have watched Terry Drafts and Jane Collins leave their ship and descend into the spines.

  Emma posted the time at the Quagmire site, late evening on the twenty-third, exactly twenty-five minutes before communications had stopped.

  It was after midnight on the Heffernan. He felt weary, tired, numb, but not sleepy. While they waited he sent off a preliminary report to Serenity. No sign of the Quagmor. Continuing investigation.

  They talked about the incident. Odd that they’d just vanish. You don’t think they might have just taken off? Or been grabbed by something? Sounded wild, but no stranger than simply dropping out of sight. Sky laughed at the idea, but asked Bill whether anything unusual was moving in the area.

  “Negative,” said Bill.

  Watching too many horror sims.

  Emma gently pressed his arm. “Coming up,” she said. He was watching the time. Just a minute or so.

  The cloud was, of course, invisible at that range. (He couldn’t help connecting the event with the cloud. Knew it would somehow turn out to be responsible.) But they were well away from it now. The distance between their present position and the site of the incident was seven times as great as the diameter of the solar system. “I can’t imagine what we’d expect to see at this range,” he said.

  “We won’t see anything, Sky. But there’s a chance—”

  “Photons,” Bill reported. “Just a sprinkle. But they were right on schedule.”